Hey guys, we’ve misplaced a couple of club members at Elbe today. They were expected home by 4 this afternoon and neither rig that has cell phones for is even in cell range yet. There’s 3 maybe 4 rigs and at least one kid, a 5 year old boy. Both guys from our club are experienced and normally well prepared but as usual they weren’t expecting an overnight trip in subfreezing termperatures. One of our guys was bring an extra rig or two with him, but I don’t know anything about the other people.

The are running CB channel 5 and typically have FRS radios on Channel 5. We do not know which trails they are running. Given that none of the rigs has returned or made contact with any of the families as of yet, we know that they’re in trouble. Starting a search party this late at night is not a safe idea so we’re planning on being at the park around 9 when it gets light.

Our group is leaving from Faith Family Church in Milton at 7:30 on Sunday January 2, 2005.

If anyone else can go please email me or contact me via cell phone at (253) 318-8188. If it’s late and you don’t get an answer please leave a message.

None of the guys in our club know Elbe well. We really need some people who have recent experience at Elbe. Currently we only have 3-4 rigs available that are even capable of running Elbe at this time of year. This is a winch required trip for anyone coming out.

Please contact anyone who can meet us or can get to Elbe in the morning and start a search party. Channel 5 and FRS 5 will be the official channels for this search party.

Please pray for them

Sincererly,

Dale Gibbon
Gibby

 

Dale-

We will be praying for them. Please keep us posted and Godspeed to you all.

 

I hope you find these guys and everything turns out ok.

 

Prayers are answered!
Just got a call that everyone's OK and coming home.

Darn, I just finished 3 hours of reloading the rig with tools, foul weather gear, emergency supplies etc. It was a good lesson for us.

As a club we've not encountered this before. Now it's time to get the phone tree going, everyone's contact info, get trip plans documented as much as possible, including what trails they plan to run etc. I was pleased at how we all came together to help out and put everything aside to go get em'. It's a good lesson for us I guess, be prepared not only on the trail but off the trail as well. I hate to think what could've happened if they weren't par of a club and noone knew where they were or if he wives didn' know who to call if there was a problem. If there had been a real problem, they could've been out there for quite some time till someone stumbled across them.

 

so what happened? did they break down, have injuries, problems or are they jsut slow drivers?

 

We haven't heard yet. I just got a relay call from one of the wives. We should find out tomorrow what happened. That was a 5-6 hour planned run that turned into 15 hours! We did hear that there was a major breakdown on the trail from a HEEP. They could've been stuck behind that but we really don't know yet.

 

Whew, good to hear. Let us know the story when you find out.

 

It was a combination of lost, other rigs broken on the trail and lost.

They picked up a map, but even the newest maps of Elbe are way out of date.

Elbe is by no means a simple course. There were a lot of people (we found out later) also stuck and broken. Our group didn't suffer any mechanical breakdown. They did have one tense situation where a tree was keeping Bob from heading down a hill.

These were not ill equipped vehicles, locked, good offroad tires, winches and all in good running condition.

They first got lost and ended up running into a group from Cascade Offroad. Apparently there was a rig with a serious mechanical failure that blocked the trail. They'd been 4 hours getting to that spot and were given directions to get out, but to get out took them over 7 hours. Joe said that he alone winched between 30-50 times to get out. Conditions were very snotted, off-cambered and uphill. Dark didn't help.

There was one guy in the group that was prepared as he should have been to run Elbe at this time of year. He required some help from a Web Footer who pretty much dragged him up a few hills. That to whomever that was!

We should have a full trip report with pics and video in the next few days.

 

glad to hear that everyone is ok though.